Extrabiblical Evidence for the Veracity of the Gospel History
In this article I will consider incidental allusions in the gospels that are indirectly and undesignedly confirmed by extrabiblical secular sources.
In this article I will consider incidental allusions in the gospels that are indirectly and undesignedly confirmed by extrabiblical secular sources.
Even aside from the issues and problems discussed in this essay, it is clear that the absolute strongest conclusion one can conceivably draw from these sources is that they attest to ministry of Jesus in broad outline.
Watching Dale Martin teach his introductory lecture raised a number of concerns for me — not primarily because I disagree profoundly with many of Dr. Martin’s conclusions but because a significant number of the ‘facts’ he delivers in his presentation are quite simply false on a factual level, or otherwise misleading.
Richard Carrier is an ancient historian who has risen to prominence as the lead advocate of Jesus Mythicism, a school of thought that entertains the idea that Jesus of Nazareth may never have existed at all.
All of the contradictions Ehrman alleges between Acts and Paul’s letters are the result of over-readings, tendentious interpretations, and arguments from silence. The forcefulness that Ehrman ascribes to those, combined with his dismissal of the difficult details Luke gets right concerning geography and other matters as “completely irrelevant” is astounding, and really reveals his unscholarly bias against the New Testament.
Any discussion of the evidence for the resurrection must first ascertain what the original apostolic witnesses claimed and whether those claims are best explained by the resurrection, or by some alternative hypothesis.
In this article, I will consider three categories of undesigned coincidences in the New Testament – that is, examples between the gospels, examples between the book of Acts and the epistles of Paul, and examples involving the external secular sources that corroborate elements of the New Testament.
I discuss Carrier’s dismissal of coincidences involving the gospels and external secular sources, and his dismissal of undesigned coincidences in the book of Acts.